The Revolutionary Committees

Appearance of revolutionary committees in late 1977 marked a further
evolution of the political system. In response to Qadhafi's promptings,
revolutionary committees sprang up in offices, schools, businesses, and
in the armed forces. Carefully selected, they were estimated at 3,000 to
4,000 members in 1985. These supposedly spontaneous groups, made up of
zealous, mostly youthful individuals with modest education, functioned
as the watchdogs of the regime and guides for the people's committees
and popular congresses. As such, their role was to raise popular
awareness, to prevent deviation from officially sanctioned ideology, and
to combat tribalism, regionalism, self-doubt, apathy, reactionaries,
foreign ideologies, and counterrevolutionaries. The formation of the
revolutionary committees was a consequence of Qadhafi's impatience with
the progress of the revolution, his obsession with achieving direct
popular democracy, and his antipathy toward bureaucracy.

The introduction of the revolutionary committees added still another
layer to the political system, thus increasing its complexity. The
revolutionary committees sent delegates to the GPC. Under Qadhafi's
direct command and with his backing, they became so powerful that they
frequently intimidated other GPC delegates. Reports of their
heavy-handedness and extremism abound. In the 1980s, the
"corruption trials" in revolutionary courts in which a
defendant had no legal counsel and no right of appeal were widely
criticized both at home and abroad. The infamous "hit squads,"
composed of elements of the revolutionary committees, pursued Qadhafi's
opponents overseas, assassinating a number of them. Violent clashes
occurred between revolutionary committees and the officially recognized
or legitimate people's groups and the armed forces. It became clear by
the mid-1980s that the revolutionary committees had frequently stifled
freedom of expression. Regardless of Qadhafi's intentions, they had
clearly "undermined any meaningful popular participation in the
political process," as Lillian Craig Harris, an authority on Libya,
observed.